Back to USSR. Information for Soviet children
Page from the journal "Technology of Youth" No. 3 for 1968. It is very well drawn, isn't it? And the text is quite informative, especially for a boy of 14 years old
“In a dream, he remembered the last time he saw his mother, and a few seconds after waking up, the whole chain of minor events of that day was restored. Probably, for many years he pushed away this memory from himself. "What time it refers to, he did not know for sure, but then he was not less than ten years old, or even all twelve."
J. Orwell. Xnumx
J. Orwell. Xnumx
History and documents. Farther and farther away we are leaving the time of a truly great social experiment - attempts to create a social system in a patriarchal country with a petty-bourgeois peasant consciousness with a new level of social relations and high culture. The fact that this attempt is likely to fail will be warned by Lenin's comrade A. Bogdanov in his science fiction novel Red Star (1908), but then everything he wrote was considered, of course, pure fantasy. But be that as it may, a lot has been done, and primarily in the field of the development of spiritual culture. But spiritual culture is essentially a negotiable medal of education and awareness of citizens. Moreover, awareness from a young age, because, according to teachers and psychologists, a child under five years old learns about life more than for the rest of his life.
I thought about this issue and again felt that readers of VO would probably be interested in learning not so much the general information and figures about how this very “informing” happened in our country in the past, but how to get acquainted with the “little story” »Of one person, and his subjective look at how in his childhood he received information of interest to him. After all, those who remembered that era are leaving a little, and soon, as it was then, new generations at best can learn only from books.
So, recalling the past, I can say that I remember myself well from the age of five and a half, I remember a two-room house with a large stove, a canopy and barns, a huge garden and about the same houses of my friends' boys along Proletarskaya Street in Penza. And only from "our side" of the street. We never walked across the road. There were "strangers."
I felt the need to receive information even then. And he received it from the stories of adults, my closest relatives: grandfather, grandmother and mother, as well as from books that they read to me. And the books were taken from a large bookcase, the largest on our street. In other houses cost small shelves. In the barn, my grandfather kept the binder of the magazine "Twinkle" of the early 50's, which I could not remember. I could not read them either, but with pleasure I looked at the pictures. Especially those where the guns were, Tanks and machines.
Record-12 TV of 1959 of release
And then everything miraculously changed. In 1959, a television appeared in Penza, and my mother was the first to buy the Record TV on the street, although she was warned that the “TV” attracts lightning. First, the transmission began at 19.00. They went local news, transmission about the shortcomings “Television Wick” and “Wick Mail”, which examined complaints. Concerts were often shown, and then a movie was shown without fail. And no matter how interesting I play, in the evening I was obliged to call home, and then all the other guys, because televisions appeared in their homes, and we began to enjoy domestic and foreign cinema daily and together. The films showed a wide variety, ranging from “Cherbourg Umbrellas” and “Waterloo Bridge” to “Baltic Deputy”, “Baltic Sky” and such rarities as “Aelita”, “Two Friends, a Model and a Friend” and “City Lights” with Charlie Chaplin. Some films made me panicky. For example, “Silent Star” based on the 1959 novel by Stanislav Lem and “Star Boy”, filmed in 1957. However, there will be separate material about the informational component of cinema. In the meantime, I’ll just say that the movie had a huge impact on us, the boys from Proletarskaya Street.
The same "Record", rear view
There were a lot of humorous programs with the unforgettable Arkady Raikin, as well as World and Novitsky, and Plugs and Tarapunka. For their sake, I even watched concerts, because often they also participated in them. Many of their speeches were vividly political. For example, when the Americans launched copper needles into space, Mirov and Novitsky immediately reacted to this with couplets of the following content: “Wolves threw needles into the sky. After all, we can fly and thread the needles! ”
Tarapunka and Plugs - a great satirical duet of Ukrainian and Russian in the era of friendship of peoples
Surprisingly, among us, the then boys, it was somehow not customary to ask adults ... literally nothing. Those were on their own, ourselves. Of course, I liked to listen to the conversations of adults, but it never occurred to me to ask what they were talking about. Here it is!
Leo Mirov and Mark Brook (Novitsky) - two Jews who fun the whole USSR
And, of course, we were not led in the way that children are now led. "Do not run, do not jump - you fall, do not go into the puddle - you get dirty!" Only today you hear the shouts of adults walking between houses with children. It was different with us: you dressed or you dressed, released into the street - and there other yards, sheds, a wasteland beyond the railway, a construction site, a river ... run, jump, break your arms and legs, drown in the river - these were all ours, children's problems. Although, for example, if I did not come home for six to eight hours in a row, then my grandmother went to look for me in the vicinity.
Arkady Raikin: all my life is sheer laughter!
TV was probably a very important source of information for quite some time. But gradually others began to be added to it. For example, a radio. However, I listened to the radio even before the appearance of a television receiver in the house, but I do not remember very well what was broadcast there. But then, getting older, I listened to him for hours, especially since children's programs were usually broadcast on Sundays in the morning, when the television was not yet working.
And I must say that the programs were just excellent - they would be for adults to listen now! “Club of famous captains” (“In the rustle of mice, in the creak of floorboards, we slowly and dignifiedly leave the pages. The caftans rustle, someone's sword rings, we are all captains, everyone is famous!”). It was she who introduced me to Captain Nemo, the captain of the Korshun corvette, Dick Sand, Tartaren from Tarascon (when I found out that I have a book in my home library, I really rejoiced, but I read it already at 14!). There were also such programs about literature as “In the Country of Literary Heroes” and “Postal Stagecoach”. And what about the funniest program “KOAPP” - “The Copyright Committee of Nature”? Or "Baby Monitor", who taught to write and reduce fractions correctly. “But I don’t remember, even kill, the reduction of fractions!” Not very pedagogical, but erased in memory forever! How much she gave me useful information, you can’t even say. By the way, I heard about Gagarin’s flight on the radio, sitting at home due to slushy spring and bad weather.
"One hundred business of two friends." A unique book for its time. And at first there was a TV program, then a book. As an adult, I did the same, only already in Penza. First, the TV program "UT Studio", "Workshop of a school country", "Children invented", and then the books - "From everything at hand", "When the lessons are done", "For those who like tinkering"
By the way, returning to educational programs on TV, I want to note that in the 60s of the last century they were broadcast almost constantly. On the Central Channel - the program "One Hundred Things of Two Friends", and on the Leningrad (but it also went on in Penza) - the program "Operation" Sirius-2 ". Very unusually conceived, by the way. Two major roles were played Robot - Trix (he starred in the movie "Planet of Storms") and Mecha, allegedly abandoned to us on Earth from an inhabited planet near the star Sirius. They got acquainted with our Earth and introduced it to those who watched this program. Naturally, it also could not do without “bad Americans”. So, Trix, flying over the Pacific Ocean, met in the sky with a US Air Force combat aircraft, which fired at him "many small pointed objects that could harm his mechanisms." Trix collected them with his protective magnetic field and sent them back, after which "the aircraft chasing him began to descend sharply." Naturally, the children, participants in the program, shouted “Hurrah” in unison.
There he is, Trix Robot. First, the robot in the movie "Planet of the Storms"
We didn’t have such programs in Penza, but we watched Valentin Zorin and our local political scientist Granovsky, who talked about the international situation in the “talking head” format twenty minutes a week. So, in general, one could not ask them what was going on in the adult world! Very frightened the transfer of the headquarters of civil defense. But on the other hand, I knew exactly what to do in the event of an atomic bomb explosion and that the hay, which had poisonous chemicals, was burned, and if radioactive, it was buried.
Needless to say, the TV shows The Cinema Travel Club, which has been out since 1960, and The Kids About the Beasts, were among my favorite shows? And since 1966, the miniature theater "Zucchini 13 Chairs" was added to them, which went out at exactly 20.00.
"Zucchini 13 chairs." Pan Professor, Mrs. Monika, Pan Votruba and Pan Director solve some “important issue”
I read books at home. They read interestingly, a lot, so that I myself did not want to learn to read. I was literally written down to the school library by force in May 1963 after my mother read to me both the Viking Campaign by Jean Olivier and Three Musketeers by A. Dumas and Professor Duel Head A. Belyaev. The reason for such a strange choice of books for reading to a first-grader child was apparently due to the presence of all this on the shelves of our bookcase, where there were simply no children's books. And mother was not up to going to the children's library for books, and she read what was interesting to her. As a child, I was often sick, could not sleep and lay with a high fever. Well, she read to me ... “Island of the Dead Ships”, “Amphibian Man” and even Herbert Wells’s novels “The Invisible Man”, “The War of the Worlds” and “When the Sleeping One Wakes Up”. These were not children's books at all, but ... they provided a lot of food for the mind. I well remember how I lay with temperature, listened to the horrors of the Martians or the death of the unfortunate Griffin and banged my teeth in fear, and everyone thought that I had a chill. As a result, I read Russian folk tales at the end of the fourth grade and was very surprised that, it turns out, there are such interesting books.
Fighting for Fire is a favorite book from an early age.
“Aircraft Designer Tales” was the book that generated interest in technology
Since 1964, magazines have become another source of information for me. At school, again, they demanded that we write out children's publications - "Funny Pictures", "Murzilka", but they seemed too childish to me, because at home my grandfather wrote out the magazine "Around the World" and read a lot from it to me, well, there were pictures too very interesting. But if necessary, then necessary. And then my mother wrote to me a whole bunch of magazines: “Young Technician”, “Young Naturalist”, “Pioneer” and “Bonfire”, so there was no question of any “Murzilka” here. Moreover, all the same magazines of my elder cousin were given to me for the 50s, so I didn’t so much learn, or rather, learn somehow, how much, over the years, read these magazines and ... compared with what wrote in the 60s. So the craving for the analysis of the read and the systematization of the material I already showed up. Well, to technology, too, because, as soon as in 1964, A.S. Yakovleva “Aircraft Designer Tales”, I was immediately bought it, and I forced her to read it, although by that time I had been able to read it myself for a long time. But he loved that "iconic" books were still read aloud to me.
“Viking Campaign” - since then I love this topic, as evidenced by the publications on “VO”
All of these publications were very informative. In the magazines “Bonfire” and “Pioneer” (I don’t remember which ones) I read V. Krapivin’s wonderful novels “The Side Where the Wind Is”, “People from the frigate“ Africa ”and“ Squire Kashka ”, the fantastic novel“ Guests with Miona ”, fantasy Astrid Lindgren“ Myo, My Myo ”and Pamela Travers“ Mary Poppins ”. It was in the Koster magazine that there were descriptions (on the penultimate page of the cover) of the cutter and Polynesian catamaran models - in a word, which was not only in these magazines!
From this issue my acquaintance with the magazine “Horizons of technology for children” began. The picture caught my attention, and I immediately bought a magazine and then bought for many years. By the way, the magazine came to us in the USSR until 1990.
In 1966, the Modeller-Designer magazine began to appear, and I went to buy it at a kiosk at the end of our street. However, there I also found another magazine that won my heart - the Polish magazine for Soviet children, “Horizons of technology for children.” Surprisingly, then they understood how important it was to make friends of the children of our countries, to deprive them of the prejudices of adults, and this was done very skillfully, at least from the side of the Poles who published this magazine. In fictionalized form, it reported on the achievements of science and technology, not only of Poland, but also of other countries, including the USSR and pre-revolutionary Russia.
On the last page of the cover of this issue was such a technical mystery. It was necessary to send a letter with answers to Poland and get a prize. But ... I have never won, so what were the prizes, I can not say
Very interesting fiction stories on the history of science and technology were printed. From it one could learn about the simplest physical and chemical experiments, about how to make certain home-made products, and also addresses of Polish children who wanted to correspond with their peers in the USSR were given in it. And, yes, we corresponded, although our correspondence broke off pretty quickly. We simply did not know what we could write to each other, and we had little money for gifts.
In the magazine "Model Designer" there were many interesting topics, and also came across very interesting drawings for a 14-year-old boy
In the same year, we were accepted as pioneers by the whole class, after which it was necessary to write out “Pioneer Truth”, but I wrote it a year earlier and did not regret it. Because it was in 1965 that the excellent fantastic novel “The Night Eagle” by A. Lomma was published there, and then the adventure novel “The Blue Lobster” (continuation of the novel “The Island of the Giants”) by A. Neggo. By the way, both last works have been made into films. First they shot the four-episode television movie “Shadows of the Old Castle” on “The Island of the Giants”, and then the color film “Passenger from the Equator”. That is, it was just a sea of pleasure - first read, then watch! But the first three pages of all kinds of slogans and appeals like: “Pioneer is an example to all the guys” I usually never read.
And here is a page from the magazine "Technique-Youth" No. 2 for 1968. Then for the first time I saw so many pistols that we, then-boys, saw only in the movies and who loved to do it with our own hands. But what if there is no picture or photograph? And here at least something. As a result, for several days I only dealt with the fact that on our entire street I was redrawing pistols and revolvers that the guys liked
I remember how in the printed edition of the book “Club of Famous Captains” I found a drawing of a revolver - a dragoon Colt. I did not know then that he was dragoon. But it was a real holiday. Immediately he began to do it and did it. With a rotating drum from a piece of handle from a shovel!
Since 1968, I said goodbye to Pionerskaya Pravda, as well as to the Pioneer and Koster magazines, as I became a member of the Komsomol, but then I began to write out “Technique for Youth” and read “Abroad” to do political information in class . The Young Naturalist also had to be abandoned. I realized that animals and plants are not mine.
Children, if they wanted, of course, and the wishes and abilities of their parents, could receive an almost unlimited amount of information that was allowed for distribution in society at that time. On our street, however, so few were lucky. Many parents from working families spared money on a subscription. However, those who wanted could take the same magazines in libraries. So, we generally had enough positive information, except perhaps the images of pistols and revolvers, coupled with another cinema-television weapons. We also received “anti-social information,” but I will tell you next time how and in what way.
To be continued ...
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